EPA: Power usage in data centers could double by 2011

Electricity use in US data centers could double by 2011, but the good news is …

The Environmental Protection Agency released a new report on energy efficiency in data centers—and the results are electrifying (groan). According to the government's best estimates, energy usage at data centers has doubled between 2000 and 2006, and it's poised to double again by 2011. The government has plenty of reasons to care about this, but one of the most obvious is financial. If growth continues at current levels, the federal government alone will be shelling out $740 million for data center electrical bills in 2011.

The report was authored by researchers at the government's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (the same authors previously calculated that US servers currently use the same level of electricity as all color TVs in the country combined). The final results, out this week, indicate that the US used 61 billion kilowatt-hours of power for data centers and servers in 2006. That's 1.5 percent of all US electricity use, and it cost the companies that paid those bills more than $4.5 billion.

With numbers like these, it's not hard to see why companies are going green. In the technology sector, especially, companies have gotten the message that servers can cost more money to power than to purchase. That, combined with widespread worries about global warming, has lead IT organizations like the Green Grid and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative to work on ways to lower power consumption in the data center.

While servers certainly require plenty of power, the data center infrastructure uses the same amount of electricity as the servers. Cooling and power conversion systems soak up half the total power of a data center and are one of the best places to start when it comes to making the data center more efficient.

The EPA makes a host of recommendations for cutting down infrastructure energy use and claims that if all of them are put into place, data centers can see up to an 80 percent improvement in energy efficiency. Suggested changes include improving transformers and uninterruptible power supplies, installing higher-efficiency chillers, fans, and pumps, and installing direct liquid cooling systems. On the server side, the report recommends enabling power management on all servers, aggressively consolidating servers and storage, and eliminating unused servers.

What about the savings?

But it's not all bad news. While IT companies are realizing just how expensive power can be, the nation as a whole may actually be seeing significant efficiencies. Shopping at Amazon, for instance, saves gas and reduces gridlock. So does online banking. So does visiting eBay instead of garage sales.

The report puts it this way: "The data processing and communications services provided by data centers can also lead to indirect reductions in energy use in the broader economy, which can exceed the incremental data center energy expenditures in some cases." Still, the report points out that this is no reason not to work for energy-efficient data centers, especially when it can lead to cost savings for everyone involved.

But before we can all be led into the great green pasture, a couple of fences bar the way. The major one is measurement: what exactly does it mean to be energy-efficient? This is been a problem for years, as there is no industry-standard method for measuring the efficiency of a data center as a whole. The report notes that "data center operators need standard definitions of productivity in order to purchase energy-efficient equipment, operate it in an optimal way, and design and operate the buildings to house it."

That work is being undertaken by groups like the Green Grid, which we expect to make an announcement this week about what's it has been up to and how these sorts of metrics are coming along. Once ways of measuring energy efficiency are in place, the EPA report emphasizes that the federal government can really set the tone for the entire industry, due simply to its size.

This has nothing to do with new laws or regulations but simply with procurement. In the same way that California regulators and lawmakers can affect products sold throughout the US, federal procurement can force companies to alter their products and their business plans in order to get a slice of the massive federal market. How many data centers does the federal government operate? Enough to account for a full 10 percent of the total data center power expenditure in the US.

If the government leads by example and also offers financial incentives, product labeling requirements, increased money for research and development, and challenges to the private sector, the EPA's estimates show that data center power usage in 2011 could be reduced to the level seen in 2000, even though the number of total servers will skyrocket. Even if industry as a whole does not adopt the aggressive "state of the art" measures called for in the report, the federal government could still do so and save itself a cool $510 million a year. Who says it's not easy being green?